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I have illustrated the lapses in the so called increased security at airports lately. But in case you have been living under a rock or actually think being strip searched, fondled, and irradiated are good for you and mean that the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) is there to keep you safe and ensure that the bad guys are not going to blow up or hijack your aircraft should think again.

This morning, this article was in our local news. Drinks Bought Inside Airports Tested (WTOP). Lest you think that is a typo and should read Drinks Brought Into Airports Tested, no, it is not. The TSA is testing drinks, purchased inside the secure area for explosives because:

Vendors and employees at airports are not screened every day

As George Carlin would say: “Let me say that again, because it sounds, vaguely important.” Vendors and employees at airports are not screened every day. I can understand that there is a certain level of expectation of, oh, call it goodness in those that run the airport. FAA air traffic controllers, airport management, and life safety officials (police, fire, rescue) are all subjected to numerous, one would hope, rigorous background checks. They have access to areas of the airport that the average person would never get to go (like the runways for example). But to extend this assumption to the vendors, many of whom are not US citizens – at least here in DC, and I am sure in other places – is ludicrous. Worse, to think that they are more trustworthy than the traveling public, which includes numerous people with higher clearances, and more intense background checks than those who are working at the airport is just absurd.

The TSA’s job is to protect the traveling public. Their focus, since their creation, has been on improving the perceived weaknesses in air safety. They have failed. Utterly. This is only the latest example of their short comings. How many more are we, their paymasters, going to allow?

I have left no rock unturned in my derision of the Department of Homeland (In)security, and its security arm, the Transportation Security Administration. Today, the Los Angeles Times posted the following article:

The worker’s offence? Writing a note on that form letter TSA put in your luggage when they riffle through it looking for your valuables…er…checking it for explosives. In this case, the agent discovered a vibrator. Way to jump right on that dangerous weapon there TSA, but why is it that you missed the loaded .38 not a week earlier?

TSA has argued that they are looking for explosives, not firearms, and clearly a pair of batteries placed end-to-end are more important to check out than a firearm with rounds in the chamber, because the super-sensitive detection equipment that cannot tell the difference between plastic explosives and peanut butter means you have to open the suit case, but clearly shows you that there are rounds in the chamber of a firearm! And let’s face facts, if a gun discharges in the uncompressed baggage compartment, it will only make a hole in the aircraft. At least that is probably what the folks at TSA are hoping anyway. Never mind that they do not bother to actually check the airframe for explosives, which is a blessing for our friends in Columbia who continue to successfully smuggle drugs around the United States every day.

The bare facts are that the highly trained and background checked employees of the Transportation Security Agency are no better than the Keystone Kops they replaced in most airports. I say that with a certain degree of derision because I do remember going through airports where the security was much better under the private companies because the private companies hired people that actually cared about what they were doing, which is protecting the flying public. The TSA is only paying lip service. And if you do not believe me, just look up the number of them that have been disciplined for doing little to protect you versus the number of times they have stopped a real incident from happening.

I used to think that Ireland was the most backwards of all the developed nations. It only recently allowed birth control and certainly has issues with such common place things as divorce and homosexuality. I say used to because the United States just passed them on the slide down the hill.

This morning in the New York Times, they were discussing the Personhood Amendment that is on the November ballot in Mississippi and gaining strength in Florida and Ohio. Now you can argue that Ireland is probably more developed as a nation than Mississippi, but what really made my jaw hit the floor was this statement:

Mississippi Personhood is an initiative to define a person as a person from the time they are conceived. The initiative is a response to what some perceive as loosening abortion laws nationwide. If this constitutional amendment passes, Mississippi will have one of the strongest pro life laws in the nation.

We all understand that this is nothing less than an end run around Roe vs. Wade and yet another attack on women, but what is leaving me scratching my head is the line strongest pro life laws in the nation. Did I miss a memo? Did they manage to repeal the Second Amendment in Mississippi? Perhaps the people pushing this so-called Personhood should take a look at the number of children murdered by firearms in Mississippi than abortions conducted.

If this organization really is pro-life (and they are not, they are simply anti-abortion, which is a different mind set entirely) they they would be lobbying for stronger gun laws, rather than criminalizing a medical procedure.

News out of Libya is joyous. Especially if you are a Libyan. The death of Moammar Gadhafi is being celebrated by the people of Libya as it should be. And like the removal, and death, of other dictators over the last few months, there is a certain sense of release and relief spreading around the globe. But before we get too swept up in the euphoria, we should take a few moments and recognize that the downfall of a dictator, even if it is something that is desired, is not a panacea.

For the most part, I suspect that the people of Libya, or Egypt or Iraq are very much like those of us in the United States. They get up, they go to work, they do their job and they come home. Under a dictator, unlike us, there is the added fear of being picked up by the secret police for simple crimes, like thinking or trying to better themselves without paying off the right people, or just because their neighbour does not like the colour they painted their house. These are very real fears. Fears that hopefully now they are able to put behind them. We will see how that pans out over the next 8 to 10 months as these countries move towards free and open elections. You will note that I am not convinced that these elections will be either free nor open. Time will tell. I certainly hope that they will. But as we have seen, many of these nations have been rebelling against western ideas for years, and I am afraid that now that their leaders are less western, in both education and vision, will revert to more religious mannerisms for rule.

But that scares me less than not knowing who is in charge. Moammar Gadhafi was a nut job. Flaky, I believe President Reagan called him. But at least he was in charge. You could follow the money in and the weapons out. This was true of most of the dictatorships. You only had to watch one person. Maybe two. With the over throw of the dictator, you have a much bigger problem. Who do you watch? Libya was described by the BBC yesterday and the weapons bazaar of the Middle East. But with only one merchant minding the shop, it was easy to know who you were dealing with. Now there is a very serious question about who is minding the store and more importantly, who is buying and selling the weapons that many believe are not only there, but will shortly be making their way to individuals that make Moammar Gadhafi look sane, grounded, and fun to work with. And these individuals want nothing more than the complete annihilation of the West, and the modern way of doing things.

This is not a complaint against the people of Libya or those who have been crying out for their basic human rights since the Arab Spring began. They are fully entitled to those rights and privileges enjoyed by many around the world. But I am concerned that with the rapidity of change, and the lack of real leadership in any of these countries that if we take our eye off the ball now, we may be regretting it later.

On the cover of McPaper this morning, the headline screamed …Or the Terrorists Win. Now I am not 100% sure what exactly the article was about, I only caught the flashy title. But on seeing this, I only had one thought…

The terrorists have already won.

Let me say that again. The terrorists have already won. Plain and simple. In the blink of an eye, Americans have given up rights and privileges in the name of security, driven themselves almost to bankruptcy in the name of security, and cower under the blankets, all on the off chance they too become victims of terrorism.

This is not the first time I have covered this, but certainly, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, it is a good time to look at what those attacks have wrought. Contrary to popular thought, September 11, 2001 was not the first act of terrorism on American soil. Contrary to popular thought, it was not the first act of terrorism in the world. Only the latest (at the time) and certainly not the last. But instead of looking to how other countries have coped (or not) with terrorism, the United States, because that is the way they roll, went their own route. They bombed uninvolved countries, threw money at cities for security and introduced legislation stripping away the rights guaranteed under the Constitution, turning it from the law of the land into little more than a set of guidelines you might want to follow if they are not too inconvenient.

Welcome to 2011. The foreign press have been doing a number of articles about how the United States has changed and what sort of progress has been made since 2001. What is funny is that it is the foreign press doing these investigations because it is not something the domestic press would ever do. To question the progress made is seen as unpatriotic as asking why the government wants us to take off our shoes when we go through security at the airport even though drug smugglers seem to have no issues using airplanes to move their product, even in these high security days. One of the most amazing facts, besides the almost completely ineffective airport security, is the amount of money thrown at cities and counties and states for the purchase of things that will help deter, defer or prepare for a terrorist attack. Most of the money has been wasted, for lack of a better term. Equipment sits unused in warehouses because the people are not trained on how to use it, foodstuff are rotting, forgotten on shelves, rather than rotated properly, and the average population is no more ready for a terrorist attack in 2011 than they were in 2001 as illustrated by something as simple as a heavy rain, the result of the remnants of a hurricane. If we are not prepared for what Mother Nature throws at us, how can we say we are prepared for a terrorist action?

And then there are the deaths. Sure, it makes news when a large number of people die. Just look at the news that is made when there is a car crash. Oh, wait. That is not news. And that is the point. More people die in traffic accidents in the United States every month than have died in terrorist actions in the world over the last generation. Heck, more people die of heart disease and smoking in a year than have died in all the terrorist actions ever. And yet we are more worried about preventing a terrorist action than we are about wrapping our cars around a telephone pole, smoking, or gun related deaths. One wonders just how skewed the priorities are.

The United States has spent billions of dollars fighting terrorism, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meanwhile the infrastructure is crumbling, the Government is on the verge of bankruptcy, and the population is getting older, which will further strain already stressed services. You cannot kill an …ism. You cannot defeat terrorism. You can only be vigilant. But vigilance must be balanced by rational risk assessments. Hopefully, as we cross the 10 year mark, some rational risk assessment will be imposed, but I am not hopeful…not by a long shot.